


as good a place to fall

by The_Wavesinger



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/F, Grief/Mourning, some D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Carol and Stephanie, after the Snap, learning to deal with losing.
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12
Collections: 300bpm Flash Exchange November 2019





	as good a place to fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silvereye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/gifts).



> The title is from the Florence + the Machine song 'Bedroom Hymns'.

When Carol was a kid, she had a little Captain America figurine that she took everywhere with her. Stephanie Rogers, the woman who fought like a man, who lead a team of men and fought, in combat, because she was _just that good_. An aberration, an exception, they said, and Carol always wanted to be like her.

—

Stephanie Rogers is—

After, she looks at the Black Widow (Natasha Romanov, _Nat_ , Stephanie had called her) with something in her eyes that Carol can’t understand.

“So that’s it,” Tony Stark says, and he’s laughing the laugh of a man who just condemned himself to death, but Carol’s still looking at Stephanie. She’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Romanov, and the slump of her body spells defeat. She’s looking down and away, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Even her blond ponytail is wilting, half-undone and hairs flying wildly. It’s—not what Carol expected.

At all.

But then, she never expected to return to Earth to fight a war that had already been lost.

—

Carol’s heard the stories, seen the films. Captain America never gives up. Stephanie Rogers marched onto the battlefield and never marched back out, and she keeps fighting and fighting and fighting. Kept fighting until the day she died, encased in ice, gone down protecting her country.

Carol always wanted to be like her.

—

They’re in Belgium, trying to calm down rioters who have taken to burning builds with people in them, _alive_. Carol can still hear the screams ringing in her ears, can smell charred flesh, even as she tries to direct people away from the buildings with gentle blasts.

It’s always worse at home, somehow. It feel supremely selfish, that her shock and anger and disgust and rage are multiplied on Earth, but that’s how it is, and finally, hours later, when what remains of the local police have asserted a semblance of control, she stumbles around a corner and into an alley, to throw up her guts in private.

She almost falls down on Stephanie Rogers.

Stephanie is crouched on the ground, her eyes closed. There are tear tracks streaking across her dirt-coated face. Next to her is a body, blood pooling around its head in a sick puddle, hand still clutching a gun.

“He killed himself,” Stephanie says, matter-of-fact, looking up at Carol, and even though her long eyelashes are still wet with tears, her blue eyes watery, she’s steady, even. “Grabbed a gun in the confusion, put a bullet right through his own head. I heard the shot.”

She darts a glance at her own sidearm, and Carol doesn’t think about it. At all.

—

There was an old film of Captain America that Carol loved watching. Holding her gun, strong and reassuring, crouching down to protect a little girl from a blast. “It’ll be okay,” she said, her voice raspy and yet gentle.

Carol always wanted to be like her.

—

“I thought I was doing this with C—Rogers.” Another slip-up, and Carol has to stop with those, if they’re going to be colleagues. When they are colleagues. She knows it makes Stephanie uncomfortable, but. She can’t help it.

Romanov shakes her head. “Sorry, Danvers. This one, you’re on your own.”

In the months Carol has known her, Stephanie’s never turned down a mission. Not ever. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” Romanov pauses, regards Carol for a second. Then, softly, as if imparting a secret, “She’s retiring. No more missions.”

The last mission they’d had together, they’d failed to talk down the Prime Minister of Australia from jumping off a roof, and they had been too late to grab her mid-air. The accusations she flung at them (the Avengers should’ve stopped it, they were too weak, why hadn’t they done anything, failure and grief and impotent rage) lay heavy like some sour aftertaste after a long night of drinking.

She’d been blond and blue-eyed and her broken body looked entirely too much like Stephanie as it lay on the ground, after.

Not the first suicide either Carol or Stephanie had seen, wouldn’t be the last. The look on Stephanie’s face, though, after—“Romanov. _Natasha_.”

Romanov shakes her head. Carol can almost see her closing ranks. Whatever’s wrong with Stephanie (but Carol already knows, it’s everything that’s wrong with all of them), it won’t be Romanov who’ll tell her. “She just needs a break. She’ll be back.”

“Okay,” Carol says, but makes a mental note to stop by at Stephanie’s place. It’s the least she can do.

—

The less flattering stories about Captain America talk about how she was a pervert, a freak. There were stories about her and her troupe of dancing girls near the beginning. Stories of her childhood best friend, Rebecca Barnes, Bucky Barnes’ younger sister, and how that rescue was on the back of a vow made to her. There were hidden undercurrents that Carol didn’t understand, at first, but even when she realized what the sneers and the twisted words meant, well.

Carol always wanted to be like Stephanie Rogers.

—

Stephanie’s room on-base is spare. A neatly-made bed, desk piled high with papers, and that’s it.

“I’ve been meaning to move out,” Stephanie says with a wry look when she catches Carol’s wandering gaze. “Never got around to it, but I have more time on my hands now, so.”

And that’s her cue, and Stephanie knows that, too, by the way her posture straightens and her eyes (blue, blue, and why does she think that _now_ , control, Carol) sharpen. “Rogers. Um. I’ve been meaning to ask—”

“Call me Stephanie,” Stephanie interrupts, and that almost makes Carol rethink herself.

But no. This is necessary, and she doesn’t know what exactly Romanov and Stephanie have, their not-really-words communication thing and how they check in on each other, but she’s seen that look Stephanie had, on that building, before. And Captain America isn’t going to eat a bullet on Carol’s watch. “Right, Stephanie. Is…is everything okay?”

“Carol.” Stephanie places a warm hand on Carol’s arm. (Carol maybe jumps, and maybe goosebumps go up her spine. Stephanie doesn’t touch people that often, and Carol’s just not used to it.) “I promise, I’ve done this before. A few times.” Carol wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been looking straight at Stephanie, but there’s a yawning pit of something unnameable for a second in Stephanie’s eyes, and then it’s gone, and Stephanie’s smiling again. “I’ll be okay.”

“Promise me,” Carol says, and she doesn’t like how desperate that sounds, how on-edge she sounds, but. All in the service of a greater good, she supposes.

“I’ll be fine,” Stephanie says lightly. She doesn’t smile—Carol has never seen her smile—but she manages to convey reassurance, still, somehow, in the tilt of her perfectly square jaw, maybe, or in the rippling of her shirt as she shrugs. “I’ve actually been thinking of starting a support group, maybe. Trying something new. Like Sa—” she takes a shallow breath “trying to be like someone I kno—knew, I guess. Someone who helped me at a very dark point.”

“I—okay.” That’s out of her depth. A lot out of her depth, really. Carol’s always been a fan of punching away her problems. Talking’s never entered into the equation. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” Stephanie promises, and Carol can feel her eyes on her back the whole time she’s walking away.

—

Captain America wasn’t the reason Carol joined the Air Force. She always wanted to fly. Her technique for punching idiots, though, Carol learned straight from Cap. It wasn’t maybe good technique, and her hand-to-hand instructors despaired at her form. “It gets the job done,” Captain America said in one of the reels.

Carol always wanted to be like her.

—

Carol _misses_ Stephanie.

It’s strange, because she never really spent much time with her to begin with. Even when Carol was on Earth, the missions where either of them needed backup were few and far between. Carol’s flown mostly solo for a long time now.

Still, the next time she’s on Earth, she asks Stephanie to spar.

It’s not really a fight.

The thing is, Stephanie is good. She can hold her own against Carol for a couple of minutes, sometimes even ten or fifteen, sharp and smart and thinking, always _thinking_ , staying up and in the fight by pure force of will. She has blood running down her cheek from a cut and she’s panting harshly and she still won’t stay down.

“You’re holding back,” she says, and there’s frustrating in her voice as she pummels at Carol.

Carol’s holding back on her powers, of course, and maybe, maybe, she’s pulling her punches just a little bit, but. She doesn’t want to hurt Captain America.

“Don’t hold back,” Stephanie snaps. And that’s her command voice, Carol things, In Charge, confident, and Carol shivers, the hairs on her arm standing up and a thrill running down her spine.

Carol throws herself into the fight, after that.

Stephanie’s got the supersoldier serum pumping through her veins, but there’s no way it compares to the power of an Infinity Stone. Still, she never gives up. She’s fast and hard on her feet, ruthless with her blows and absorbing every punch like she was born to fight. She falls down and gets up and falls down and gets up, and her hair is flying wild, wisps of blond framing her face, her eyes bright, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. There are bruises blooming on every part of her skin that Carol can see, blood seeping from various nicks and cuts, and she’s still fighting, and it’s one of the most beautiful sights Carol has ever seen. It takes her longer and longer to bounce back up, slow and sluggish and wincing with pain, but she still goes on.

It’s Carol who calls a halt to the sparring, finally. Worried, though she knows, now, better than to say it aloud, that she’ll break Stephanie’s bones if they go on any longer. The way Stephanie’s gasping for breath and flinching with every movement doesn’t give her much comfort on that front, but Stephanie seems to lean into the pain, sponge it up. It’s a little bit terrifying.

“Thanks,” she says, “I don’t get to fight like that often.” And suddenly she’s looming over Carol for a second, and then she’s gone.

—

Carol didn’t have many close friends, until Maria. She didn’t have any close friends, really, until Maria. She read about Stephanie Rogers and the Barnes siblings, Bucky the soldier and Becca the nurse, and imagined having friends like them.

Carol always wanted to be like Stephanie Rogers.

—

Carol tries to visit Maria.

She’s older, now, and Carol hates how Maria’s aged, how Monica’s grown up without her, but she tries to visit them as often as she can.

This time, though—

This time. This time.

She’ll drag Thanos’ body out of the ground and resurrect him and kill him all over again. She _will_. He deserves nothing else.

“Spar with me,” she demands of Stephanie, barging into her room without knocking. “I need you to spar with me. Please.”

Stephanie takes one look at her, shakes her head. “No. Not like this. Whatever’s happened, Carol, sparring isn’t going to fix it.”

“I need to fight.” Carol knows she sounds desperate, doesn’t care. She’s good at punching things, not—this. She knows, in the back of her mind, that Stephanie isn’t much better than her, is holding herself together through some fragile mechanism Carol doesn’t want to know of, but she doesn’t really care about that right now.

All she wants is to _fight_.

“Carol, calm down.” Stephanie’s hands are on her shoulders, bare skin on bare skin (Carol stripped her suit off as soon as she could, she needed it to hurt). That, more than anything, jolts her back into something resembling normality.

“I don’t—” She doesn’t have words, not for this. She runs her hand through her hair and wants to make Thanos _burn_. Except he’s already dead and there’s no way back. All that’s left is this endless slog that they’re trying to wade through without accidentally setting what’s left of the universe on fire. They might still cause a second apocalypse by some stupid mistake. “I can’t. _Stephanie_. I can’t.”

Stephanie looks at her, long and hard. Something solidifies behind her eyes, and she seems to come to a decision.

And then, suddenly, she’s moving forward, closer and closer to Carol. And she’s kissing her, they’re kissing, and it feels like flying. Like the first time she climbed into a cockpit, like the first time she learned to soar through the skies with the power of the Stone coursing through her blood.

It tastes like freedom, and like bitter victory.

—

“You’re my best friend,” Carol told Maria, once, the two of them lying side-by-side on damp grass and staring up at the stars. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.” She thought about Captain America crashing a plane into the sea after Bucky Barnes fell off a train, after Becca Barnes was caught in an explosion in France.

Maria smiled at her. Said, gently, “You’ll live. You’ll go on.”

—

Stephanie is _gentle_.

Carol didn’t expect that. Carol expected the same hardness, the same edge of danger that Stephanie exuded in sparring, and, well, that’s there in spades, but she’s gentle, too.

Carol’s the impatient one, shrugging off her clothes with the practised ease of a campaigning soldier, reaching for Stephanie’s clothes too, tearing at them, fast and practical.

A hand on her wrist stops her.

And suddenly Stephanie’s kissing her again. Her lips are still gentle, still refusing to give in, even the way she sinks her teeth into Carol’s bottom lip and _tugs_ gentle, somehow. The soft material of her flannel shirt rubs against Carol’s nipples as their bodies press together, setting nerve endings afire.

Stephanie’s got Carol’s hands behind her back; she removes her hair elastic so her blond hair falls loose across her shoulders and snaps it around Carol’s wrists. A restraint she could escape easily, should she see the need for it, but that’s not the point of this.

Stephanie goes back to kissing her, and she’s gentle, so gentle, still, but she’s very certainly _in charge_ , her tongue exploring Carol’s mouth as she pushes Carol back towards her bed, the light pressure of her hands on Carol’s shoulders still unmistakably present, a reminder and a reassurance.

Carol goes with it. It’s—nice, to be pushed around, a little bit, even if it’s pushing around only because she allows it. She can almost (almost) forget, for a minute, why exactly she came here. Stephanie’s good with her lips and her tongue and her hand, and she’s kissing light bruises into Carol’s neck, now, leaving her dizzy and lightheaded and clutching at Stephanie.

She watched Stephanie’s hands, sometimes, jerked off to them, imagined them dancing across her body from the posters, and later from how they wrapped around sparring-rods and weapons. Now, in reality, they’re just as skilful as she imagined them to be, light touches that have her shivering with warmth and a kind of _need_ that has her whining low in her throat.

Stephanie smiles at the sound, an almost-smirk Carol’s never seen before that makes her look positively wicked. And then she does something, and Carol’s on the bed, suddenly, landing awkwardly on her arms with Stephanie looming over her.

Then Stephanie’s taking off her shirt, too, and her jeans, and she’s standing there in just a blue sports bra and men’s boxers, and there’s a line of sweat dripping down into her cleavage that Carol can’t take her eyes off of, and she wants to touch, wants to taste Stephanie’s skin and feel her beneath her hands. Except she’s still tied up. She could escape, of course, but it’s the principle of things. She just tries to sit up, instead, to reach Stephanie. To touch and to feel, to get her hands on that expanse of skin that seems to be almost calling out to her, mesmerizing.

But Stephanie pushes her down again, and then she’s naked, too, and she’s kissing a line down Carol’s stomach, and Carol’s cunt is aching for her fingers, her tongue, for anything.

Stephanie Rogers is an evil, evil woman, because she doesn’t acquiesce to Carol’s bitten-off moans and breathy pleas. She avoids Carol’s cunt entirely, tracing trails across the skin of her ribs, kissing her shoulder blades, sucking on her nipples, but her mouth and her fingers never go anywhere near where Carol needs them to go.

It’s too much, and it’s not enough.

“Having an orgasm from someone touching my stomach isn’t one of my superpowers, Stephanie,” Carol tries to snap out. To urge Stephanie on, to put an end to this absolutely hellish torture. But she’s breathless and gasping and her words come out garbled instead of sharp. She’s not sure Stephanie even hears what she says. It doesn’t matter, really, because the whine in her eyes, how she’s bucking towards Stephanie, reaching and reaching for in pure, deep _want_ , has to give her away.

Stephanie just gives her a _look_. “Shhh. You’ll come when I’m ready for you to come.” And that’s that voice, again, In Charge so effortlessly, warm and low and almost-raspy, deeper and more gravelly than any newsreel could have let on. Stephanie could command the armies of the world with that voice, Carol thinks.

Armies aside, Stephanie’s a fucking tease, with her amazing fingers, with the butterfly kisses she scatters on Carol’s thighs, with the almost-ticklish touches that Carol can feel ghosting across her ribs, with how she presses the full length of her body down on Carol and takes her head in her hands and kisses her. Carol’s entire body is tingling and sensitive, every inch of skin on fire, and there are no thoughts left, and she just can’t anymore.

“ _Stephanie_ ,” she moans. All the words she can force out at the moment, her throat sore and raspy and aching.

And somehow, for some reason, maybe because of the desperation in her voice, maybe because of the fact that she’s almost crying with need, maybe just because she’s thrashing around wildly enough that Stephanie can’t seize control (maybe not that; Stephanie’s _good_ at control), Stephanie snaps the band off her wrists.

Her fingers are on Carol’s clit and in her cunt, suddenly, and Carol’s reaching up to touch Stephanie, her own fingers sinking into warm wet heat.

It’s good. It’s so good, everything warm and pleasure-washed and full of _need_. Stephanie Rogers, Carol thinks fuzzily, fights and fucks the same way—long limbs, not particularly graceful but sharp and smooth, hell-bent on destroying you. Stephanie’s movements have become jerky and short, now, almost as if she’s breaking apart, but Carol doesn’t think about that, just moves her fingers, holds onto Stephanie so hard with her other hand that she’s sure her nails, even short as they are, will leave marks.

Carol comes before Stephanie, and Stephanie tumbles down the edge a second later.

And then suddenly they’re lying on the bed, soaked in sweat, fingers coated in each other’s wetness, and it all rushes back. Carol can feel the tears prickling in her eyes, ready to spill over.

She can’t.

It’s not Stephanie. Stephanie’s _amazing_. She’s brilliant and beautiful and oh so gorgeously hot and so so good.

It’s just. Forgetting for a second only makes it worse. A knife pulled away from a wound only to be stabbed in again, deeper and harder than before. She’ll cry if she stays. This was the best fuck of her life and crying is definitely not the message she wants to send, scaring Stephanie off is definitely not something she wants because she’d hopefully like to do this again (a lot of times, maybe, over and over again until she forgets forever, but no, that’s not a thought she wants to have about Stephanie, she needs to get away), so she moves to get up.

A hand on her wrist, again, and Carol turns to shake it off. But Stephanie is—

There’s something on her face that Carol has never seen before, knowledge and understanding and an open, broken look that Carol didn’t think Captain America would be capable of every wearing, and she tugs Carol down and presses a single, gentle kiss to her lips.

Carol blinks back her tears, doesn’t let herself cry through sheer force of will. Stephanie’s hand brushing her arm lightly anchors here. They still have to survive to fight another day, and another, and another. There’s no stopping and no going back.

They dress together, their shoulders brushing, a comfort and a reminder. _I’m here. Whatever happens, I’m here._

There’s so much to do, an entire universe in shambles, a lifetime’s worth of rebuilding, the parts of war the recruiters never tell you about, the things that were never in Carol’s old films and books and comics.

But, Carol thinks, tangling her fingers in Stephanie’s, at least she’s not alone. At least there’s someone who understands.


End file.
